Ask HN: What's next big thing in bandwidth? - <AUTHOR>

Hey,<p>I was wondering: what do you guys think will be big things in a few years time that will require a big bandwidth that's not yet available at the moment? Some years ago, this would probably have been watching movies online. So what will it be in the next few years? Any ideas? <comment><USER2> Stuff for 3D printers?

Live streaming? Yeah, we have it now, but let's say a night club give its visitors glasses which broadcast what they're seeing through a website so people can check if it's worth going... live streaming on stereoids. Or on sports matches... televisions would love to have more cameras on stadiums. Just imagine if you can figure out that an spectator, from glasses #44403, looked from seat 34 to ZXY axis, which is where something that you wanted to see happened, but your camera couldn't catch.

Mesh networks? 10 years ago we didn't have mobile internet, so it came and was expensive, now it's everywhere, and getting cheaper. But I think it's inevitable, someday someone will release a cellphone that can mesh and has mile range, and connect to free wifi networks on Starbucks, and managing all these small hubs of bandwidth inteligentlly will be hard.

Video will keep getting bigger, because tvs are getting bigger, encoders are getting better, and all that stuff. Sure more bandwidth helps, it always does, but imagine a movie studio instead of releasing to cinemas, they will, at the same day, release for download "directly" to your TV. So this video will have to be mirrored around the world, on cities, etc... because bandwidth pipe will keep getting larger, but there's always room to save costs.

If you want to go even further into the future, think space tourism, news from the/for a ISS-like hotel... er.. better get back to work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Symmetric internet links will be a big deal, if they ever happen - right now most places seem to be 8Mbit downstream and 1Mbit upstream - once symmetric high-bandwidth applications become popular p2p technologies can really start taking off.

<comment><USER4> What symmetric high bandwidth applications?

I can't think of any consumers that want to upload as much as they download.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would say Games would be huge, where we play without actually installing 8 or 10GB worth of data. Maybe just playing level by level, where it downloads files needed for that level.

Also HD video would lot more bandwidth, so i am thinking that will be huge too.

<comment><USER6> Guild Wars does this.

<comment><USER7> How well does that work, out of curiosity? Are there long loading times?

<comment><USER2> Don't know about the loading times since I didn't buy the game, but 5 other million people did!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Other than the obvious P2P file sharing that grows to fill the available space, better responsiveness (less buffering time) for high bit rate streaming video will probably dominate bandwidth needs for the near future.

Remote computing applications will probably also get richer as latency drops and throughput increases.

If we ever get in front of the common user's bandwidth needs, I'd say you might see applications that download speculatively, such as pre-buffering the videos advertised in the youtube player at the end of the selected video, or pre-downloading (pieces of) movies or TV shows that you watch online.

Beyond that there's room to innovate in being clever (video codecs that don't under-run but degrade the bitrate of the video trying to keep things flowing), and there's probably a lot of untapped innovation there that could take advantage of more bits.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think people will stop storing their data locally. This will not mean bigger transfer than video, but the number of transfer could be huge. It is doable with the bandwidth we already have, but it will become ubiquitous only when locally or remotely stored will almost feel the same.

<comment><USER10> To go with this, we need to see a large drop in latency. I think the biggest obstacle will be overcoming the total write/read throughput and speed when placing data over the broader internet versus a local hard drive or SAN/NAS.

<comment><USER11> There is one constant we can't beat -- the speed of light. Unless servers are physically closer to the people using them, latency will always be an issue.

<comment><USER12> I don't think that is the bottleneck:

"If you were a beam of light, then your trip [around the world] would take only 1/10 of a second."

[http://www.bigsiteofamazingfacts.com/how-long-does-it- take-t...](http://www.bigsiteofamazingfacts.com/how-long-does-it-take-to- travel-around-the-earth)

<comment><USER4> 100 ms is still a pretty big latency.

Add to that the slowdown of propagating in a fiber optic cable, and you've just increased the time to 150 ms.

So, for a server 1/4 of the way around the world, you're stuck with a minimum round trip time of 75 ms. This will be increased by switching times in repeaters, for example. And that's only for one data packet.

<comment><USER13> > And that's only for one data packet.

A crucial point. A few years back, I had to deal with some rather "chatty" applications that were attempting to span filesets/databases located in both the U.S. and India. Latency on a single data exchange might be annoying; multiply that by hundreds or thousands of exchanges per each human-level interaction with the application, and said application ground to something that would make a "crawl" look high speed.

Partly the vendor's fault, for not accurately representing this situation. Partly the Company's fault for neither anticipating nor investigating it (nor listening to me when I advocated doing so); further, for attempting a non- standard deployment in an attempt to save a few bucks.

I guess I'll blame the vendor again for such an unnecessarily verbose and crap-laden application design. Anyway, the whole thing turned into one giant, festering pool of fail, that the users actively avoided when they could and loathed and sweated over when they couldn't. Eventually, turnover at the pointy haired boss level made it politically feasible to kill more and more of the pieces, and now some years later the Company has supposedly ponied up the money for a solution that actually works (well, the demos look/work better, and the basic design seems capable of allowing it to work).

When I think of the countless hours and frustration wasted on that doomed deployment.

So, anyway, watch your network latency, know your application design, and pay attention to the implications. When testing, test network performance, and inject latency, noise and the like to get a picture of what things will look like in the real world.

Sounds simple; nonetheless, this technologically relatively sophisticated company still managed to completely screw it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know if this is in the cards or not, but what I hope will be the next big thing in bandwidth is cheap mobile data plans, on par with cable/dsl plans, which (together with cheaper, more powerful phones) would help push mobile computing towards ubiquity.

</comment><comment><USER14> All your home usual staff on the mobile gadged. I think 700Mhz Wimax connection across USA from "google" might be huge.

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks like it might not be wimax.

</comment><comment><USER16> telecommute

</comment><comment><USER17> the next stage is mobile computing. your smartphone will become a seamless integration with your home desktop and cloud SaaS products (your desktop will be part of the cloud as well, hell maybe even your mobile will have shared storage and be serving data). Live video telecommunications will become the norm. everyone will be a videoblogger. everyone will live with the internet at their fingertips 24/7.

it's scary isn't it?

<comment><USER18> I have to agree here. We already have movies and TV on demand on the web, "life streaming", etc. More bandwidth into the home just means increasing quality, increasing interactivity, broader adoption, etc. But, phones are just now getting broad enough broadband to make it interesting.

I'd wager that everything old will be new again on mobile devices. How many of those are business opportunities for small new companies? I dunno. YouTube has been very effective on mobile, so user-created video content is probably not one of those opportunities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Higher resolution streaming movies will be the most important thing in the next few years to come.

Projecting further into the future, 3D image/hologram transmission could be a probable candidate.</comment>


What's the lowest cost in $$$/year for EV SSL certs? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> EV SSL for $79/year. at [https://www.cheapsslshop.com/ev-ssl- certificates](https://www.cheapsslshop.com/ev-ssl-certificates)

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess that's globessl, for $50/year.</comment>


Terrorism Act incompatible with human rights, court rules in David Miranda case - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/19/terrorism-act-incompatible-with-human-rights-court-rules-in-david-miranda-case <comment><USER2> "The judgment in effect says the police acted within the existing law but the law itself was illegal."</comment>


Total Internet Shutdown in Ethiopia - <AUTHOR> https://www.iafrikan.com/2019/06/12/here-we-go-again-ethiopia-has-total-internet-shutdown-because-authorities-say-they-dont-want-students-to-cheat-during-exams-total-internet-shutdown-in-ethiopia/ <comment><USER2> I need to travel to Ethiopia this weekend and it is super fun now - as the only way to apply for eVisa is online. They shut down even their own government websites. WTFs on so many levels.</comment>


Sketchbook for web designers - <AUTHOR> http://www.vcarrer.com/2009/02/sketchbook-for-web-designers.html

<comment><USER3> Interesting idea but it's still basically grid paper and I have a beef with those types of journals - the ink color for the grids is too dark and overpowers whatever you're trying to sketch.

I used to buy "ghost grid" notebooks from Edward Tufte's site to get around this and just yesterday ordered something that looks even more promising - <USER2> dot matrix grid that gets rid of the lines completely:

<http://www.creativesoutfitter.com/Products/Dot-Grid-Book/9></comment>


Pinterest is limiting all search results for "coronavirus" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1234963065130582019 <comment><USER2> Pinterest is an interesting company. According to their quarterly reports every third American adult is using it. Google trends show a completely different picture.

<comment><USER3> I can't imagine anyone using Pinterest with that awful UI/UX and shady practices but then again, people use reddit despite all the dark patterns and crap.

I sometimes think some users are just conditioned to bad ux/ui and if they don't get it in another product, they forget how to use it and blame the product for being not good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They want people to use Pinterest and buy stuff. I guess they understood they can't make money when people search for coronavirus</comment>


User Ignorance Causes Cloud Security Leak (AWS related) - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/03/user-ignorance-causes-cloud-security-leak-accounts-passwords-revealed.php

<comment><USER2> After re-reading this article, I'm still not clear on how these snapshots ended up in _his_ EBS account. Can someone explain (in terms that a non-EBS user will understand)?

<comment><USER3> The command lists the EBS snapshots available for you to mount. Just like with VM images (AMIs), Amazon allows customers (and of course themselves) to make EBS snapshots "public" in order to allow other people to use them.

Here is an example: <http://aws.amazon.com/publicdatasets/>

So when the author says "My EBS Snapshot account was filled with hundreds of snapshots" that is technically not accurate. The output was of things strictly in his account as well as all the public ones available for use.

Some of those were marked public by the owners when they should not have been.

<comment><USER2> Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Google working on JIT compiler for Android - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/android-platform/browse_frm/thread/331d5f5636f5f532

<comment><USER2> FMI: "Dalvik is the virtual machine which runs the Java platform on Android mobile devices"... but it's not a JVM: different file format and different instruction set. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_virtual_machine>

</comment><comment><USER3> Dalvik performance has nowhere to go but up. If there's anything good about Java is that its terseness allows for loads of optimizations.

<comment><USER4> > _... Java is that its terseness ..._

Compared to what? Java has a reputation for many things, but terseness of syntax is not one of them.

I'm not trying to be derisive to the language, I just thought that was an odd assertion to make.

<comment><USER5> Elaborate syntax over an impoverished evaluation model and semantics. Java is inspired by p-code; you could implement a p-code interpreted with one switch statement in two pages.

A handful of primitive types + an straightforward single inheritence class based object system. The GC is run of the mill. Control semantics are none existent; try/catch is even more straightforward than C's longjmps.

The whole thing is small enough to be compiled for an early 90s set-top box running a 16-bit micro, and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's beautiful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here we go then, a very much anticipated move.

If only they could've hacked freely on the real JVM itself they could have invested that huge amount of brainpower to improving something existing rather than merely first starting from scratch with their own VM.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's hoping that Cyan manages to pull something off with this in a future Cyanogen release. I can see a JIT running in a G1, and since we already are able to run Apps off of a class 6 SD card, I don't see any reason not to cache the compiled code.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is awesome, but it also feels like something that should have been there from the beginning.

<comment><USER9> Maybe, but there's something to be said for releasing an imperfect version quickly and improving from there.

<comment><USER10> They very much believed that their optimized interpreter would be faster and better than JITing. And it is optimized -- they took into account cache locality, ARM instruction size, etc. You can read the design doc. They spent a lot of time on it.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Free Screen Share Party, No Install, No Login - <AUTHOR> https://ba.net/screen-share-party <comment><USER3> this looks very similar to this webrtc sample by muaz khan: [https://www.webrtc-experiment.com/Pluginfree-Screen- Sharing/...](https://www.webrtc-experiment.com/Pluginfree-Screen- Sharing/#46805587727501695)

If you use his code you should reference him

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is a fork of webrtc-experiment.com, we reference Khan on the mit code at [https://ba.net/screen-share-party/doc/opensource](https://ba.net/screen- share-party/doc/opensource)

<comment><USER4> Please give attribution more prominently. Like maybe on the about page.

As of this is just a blatant ripoff of someone else's work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I still remember the glorious days when "party" meant dropping acid and a bunch of people getting naked in the spare room. Ah, the glorious days of...February.

But, sure, WebRTC. Let's give it a shot.

<comment><USER6> OK this actually made me lol. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone know of a tool like this for streaming high-quality photos? I've been playing some board games with friends using an iPhone on a mic stand - <USER2> couldn't use video streaming tools because the quality has been all over the place (and you can't zoom in on the board.) So right now we have a simple app that takes a high-quality photo every few seconds and uploads it to a web server where all the players can view it - their browsers are long-polling for new images.

But it seems that WebRTC could improve this by not requiring the server code. I also just wonder what else there is along these lines.

<comment><USER8> This doesn't directly answer your question, but I've shifted all of my board game playing to tabletop simulator and had a lot of success with that. I've been surprised and impressed by the quality and variety of games available as mods in the steam workshop.

<comment><USER7> Yeah - done some of that too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Whats the business model here? You still need turn servers if hole punching fails, and video is pretty bandwidth heavy.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Up to 10 friends can view your screen. Limited by your CPU/RAM" \- what hardware specifications are required for this limit? Could I invite more people with faster CPU and more RAM?

<comment><USER11> I imagine there isn't a very clear spec per user because it depends on a lot of factors. I imagine you could share one video encode between many users but only if their bandwidth can accommodate the same bitrate. If not there might be two concurrent encodes.

I know modern Intel CPUs have hardware based transcoding for H264 but I'm not 100% sure whether WebRTC uses it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> You may want to check [https://whereby.com/](https://whereby.com/), it works on the same principle, but you get to choose your own URL suffix, thus making link sharing easier.

</comment><comment><USER13> I didn't realize that WebRTC had screen sharing as part of it, maybe I'll try to make a toy version of this during my quarantine down time.

<comment><USER14> I developed something similar[1] last summer.

[1] [https://jump.yaddu.pw](https://jump.yaddu.pw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks like audio is not supported?

<comment><AUTHOR> Scroll down on the page to add audio. You can add one-way audio broadcast. Or 2-way audio. Or Audio and Video Conference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How'd you acquire that domain?

<comment><AUTHOR> We were around in 1995 :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This show hn is blatant ripoff and fork of muaz khan's webrtc experiment.

That project is several years old.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is HN after all, so no comment thread is complete without a bunch of nitpicking the Web site itself.

There's a bunch of grammatical errors on the site (space after exclamation mark, missing words), which prevents me from trusting it.

The design is also very... strange. It looks like a mess. (Sorry!)

There's that first logo "BA net" which looks pretty bad, like someone took someone elses app icon and used Paint to draw a rectangle and some text above it.

Everything around the header is positioned weirdly. My eyes don't know where to focus. There's no visual hierarchy. (Also, what's with that weird "party" icon at the right? At least make it the same size as the BA net logo, and align it to the top right.)

Above the header there's a sort of feature list, I thought it was a menu at first. Why use a period to separate items? Maybe move it down to the features list along with some context ("Here's what you can use it for...")

The big button looks ok, but it's encased in a grey border. Why is there a border around it?

Same with the feature list. The border just makes it look ugly. There's no padding to the left of the "Features" header, and the first item randomly doesn't have a border. Why?

Is anyone actually using those audio and text chat iframes? First of all, they're way to small to serve a practical purpose, and they also have a border again.

The operating system icons don't look nice against the grey background. Are they even needed?

Finally there's some mess in the bottom menu link items. Just a bunch of random stuff, I guess? Maybe just remove it, and use some proper CSS instead of periods and no-breaking space characters.

You're using a lot of boxes that don't align, sometimes there's a border, there's all sorts of different font sizes. It's kind of sloppy, which reflects poorly on the underlying product.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, will polish during the quarantine

<comment><USER18> I have a different beef :) This is a tool for sharing personal information, but I couldn't spot anything close to an 'about us' / 'contact us', even a twitter link.

I wonder if that's on purpose. Or most people that might use this wouldn't care too much about the details?

<comment><AUTHOR> The nice thing about WebRTC is that is p2p. All media info goes direct between users, no middle-man server.

There is some basic information to connect the peers. But we do not store any user info on ba.net. [https://ba.net/screen/privacy.html](https://ba.net/screen/privacy.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Art of Computer Typography - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3183-the-art-of-computer-typography

<comment><USER2> This blog post is pretty light. If you really care about Knuth's work on METAFONT then you should just read the source code. It's written using WEB: <http://www.tex.ac.uk/ctan/systems/knuth/dist/mf/mf.web>

WEB is a language created by Knuth that supports his notion of literate programming.

<comment><USER3> Re literate programming. A scientist friend of mine likes to build his articles so that the graphs in a TeX are generated from an R script. Makes it easy to change some variables or try different input. sweave is another solution <http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch/Sweave/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a little video (and transcript) of Knuth describing how hard it is to make a general system for describing type: <http://www.webofstories.com/play/17114> My favorite part is when he's fighting with generalizing the 'S' and his wife suggests, "Well why don't you just make it S-shaped?"

<comment><USER5> I hope his classroom lectures don't have that same meter; it is very distracting. I'm probably going to hell for blaspheming against Knuth.

That said, thank you for posting the link - that site looks very interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For the Tolkien fans, Johan Winge's Tengwar Annatar font was created with METAFONT, mftrace (using potrace) and FontForge. The design is meant to simulate a nib pen, and METAFONT is particularly apt at producing calligraphic letter shapes.

<http://home.student.uu.se/jowi4905/fonts/annatar.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting! I use (La)TeX but I didn't know what metafont was about.

Even though I am pretty good at identifying typefaces I have forever damaged my changes of identifying the standard mac fonts like Palatino, Times, Helvetica in print. Rendered as bitmap (like on a 9" Macintosh Plus) I have no problem in telling them apart.

</comment><comment><USER7> If anyone's not sure of the advantages of a text processor, like TeX or troff, over a WYSIWYG (or WYSI-all-YG, as Kernighan said) application, then <http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-02.html> may help.

</comment><comment><USER8> TeX is great but in serious need of a rewrite. I'm not sure it will ever happen.</comment>


Which professions have the most psychopaths? CEO's, lawyers andsurgeons - <AUTHOR> http://thehustle.co/your-ceo-is-probably-a-psychopath <comment><USER2> Title: Your CEO Is Probably a Psychopath

Article: 4% of CEOs are psychopaths

That's some major clickbait in the title.</comment>


Gerrymandering and a cure for it – the shortest splitline algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://rangevoting.org/GerryExec.html <comment><USER2> Isn't gerrymandering a much more complex problem than that makes it out to be? I've always thought the problem was that it's actually difficult to even come up with a definition of what fair is. For instance, do you want each district to be as representative of the population as possible? Or do you want the house of representatives to be as representative of the population as possible? I suspect that you can't have both. For instance, if you have a state that is 60/40, then do you want each district to be 60/40? Or if it has ten representatives/districts, do you want 6 reps of one party and 4 of the other? What is districting even supposed to aim for? I don't think there is one reasonable answer to this question, which is why I think any attempt to answer this question for all states is doomed to fail.

The only way I can think of to get both is to increase the number of representatives. The House of Representatives was originally supposed to scale with the size of the population, and they eventually put a stop to that. If they had continued, then we'd have a house with a makeup that matches national polling much more closely than it does now, and gerrymandering wouldn't be as much of a problem. Isn't it true that as you add more representatives, gerrymandering distortions lessen?

<comment><USER3> > Isn't gerrymandering a much more complex problem than that makes it out to > be?

No, its vastly simpler: the problem with gerrymandering is that there is _no_ good way to draw single-member winner-take-all districts, and the solution is just _don 't do that_. Multimember districts with a system that provides proportional representation within each district (e.g., five-member districts with STV) solve the problem pretty much completely.

Algorithmic line-drawing of single-member winner-take-all district pretty much guarantees poorly-representative districts, but without anyone being able to control how and where they are bad (well, except that there are quite a lot of algorithms that can be chosen, so the political choice of _which_ to choose will be influenced by the effect the particular algorithm would have on the particular jurisdiction adopting it.)

<comment><USER4> Agreed.

But even when the USA sees the light on proportional representation, there will continue to be winner takes all elections. Executive positions (president, governor, mayor), senators, judges, ballot issues, etc.

In those cases, approval voting is the correct answer. Easy to explain, easy to tabulate, most mathematically fair, hardest to game.

Per Duvenger's Law, approval voting would probably also help replace the current two party system with more choices.

<comment><USER5> "But even when the USA sees the light on proportional representation"

"Sees the light"? Proportional representation is far from a panacea. It tends to lead to a fragmented government (which is usually bad). It also privileges party over individual candidates (which can be good or bad, but those who dislike partisanship would certainly disapprove). There are other factors at play as well.

Most (in)famously, the Weimar Republic used PR. That didn't end well.

<comment><USER3> > Proportional representation is far from a panacea.

Among modern, established democracies, proportionality of representation is pretty closely linked to public satisfaction with government, and public participation with government. Its as close to a panacea for effective democracy as you could have -- which isn't surprising, proportionality of representation is a pretty direct measure of the extent to which a government _is_ democratic.

> It tends to lead to a fragmented government (which is usually bad).

Any government in a system with a diversity of viewpoints is either going to be minoritarian or coalition based; winner take all tends to majority-of-a- majority -- which can be minoritarian -- and, whether it is that or not, tends also to involve non-overt coalition building in structuring big-tent parties. PR systems tend to be more likely to be actually majoritarian, and tend to feature _explicit_ \-- and thus more accountable -- coalition building. It doesn't lead to "fragmented" government by any meaningful measures.

Itssometimes portrayed as leading to less _stable_ government, because in parliamentary systems its associated with more rapid turnover of government administrations/cabinets, but by another measure, it leads to _more_ stable government, as while there is more frequent turnover of cabinets, there is more continuity between successive governments/cabinets, and more continuity in governments/cabinets over time.

> It also privileges party over individual candidates (which can be good or > bad, but those who dislike partisanship would certainly disapprove).

Certain methods of achieving proportionality (e.g., party list systems) may do so; candidate-centered election methods with rules that produce proportional results (like single transferrable vote in small multimember districts) do not. In fact, such systems would do the opposite compared to the status quo system in the US, emphasizing individual candidates over party by offering more competition, even in general elections, between individual candidates even in districts with a clear majority for a single party.

> Most (in)famously, the Weimar Republic used PR. That didn't end well.

Constitutional provisions for Presidential rule-by-decree had a lot to do with that, PR -- or even the particular form of PR used by the Weimar Republic -- well, if you want to argue that that was responsible for something, then go ahead and make that argument.

<comment><USER5> "Among modern, established democracies, proportionality of representation is pretty closely linked to public satisfaction with government"

When one of these "modern, established democracies" manages to maintain a stable government (or even survive) for as long as the United States has, perhaps that statement could be made.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation#Li...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation#List_of_countries_using_proportional_representation)

Other than perhaps the Scandinavian countries, that's not exactly a list that makes one optimistic about stability.

Edit: "Constitutional provisions for Presidential rule-by-decree had a lot to do with that, PR -- or even the particular form of PR used by the Weimar Republic -- well, if you want to argue that that was responsible for something, then go ahead and make that argument."

See my response to the other poster below. The PR system (and the myriad of squabbling parties produced by it) led to there being no effective government for two subsequent parliamentary elections.

<comment><USER6> Of the top twenty most developed countries in the world (ranked by HDI), over half (13) have some form of proportional representation. They aren't all Scandinavian countries, though predictably many are. Which of them would you not consider a stable government?

        Y    Norway
        Y    Australia
        Y    Switzerland
        Y    Netherlands
             United States
        Y    Germany
        Y    New Zealand
             Canada
             Singapore
        Y    Denmark
        Y    Ireland
        Y    Sweden
        Y    Iceland
             United Kingdom
        Y    Hong Kong
             South Korea
             Japan
        Y    Liechtenstein
        Y    Israel
             France

<comment><USER7> Correlation isn't causation. The best conclusion you can draw from your list is that _neither_ PR or FPTP inherently _hampers_ development.

> Which of them would you not consider a stable government?

Whoa, that's some strawman. The standard we're looking to prove is "proportionality of representation is pretty closely linked to public satisfaction with government".

<comment><USER8> _> Which of them would you not consider a stable government?_

 _Whoa, that 's some strawman._

No. The person who was being replied to specifically wrote about stability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The goal isn't pretty lines.

The goal is maximal competitiveness. Which boosts voter participation. Which gives legitimacy to the results.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Citizens_Redistrict...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Citizens_Redistricting_Commission)

 _" While the long-term results will bear out over time, independent studies by the Public Policy Institute of California, the National Journal, and Ballotpedia have shown that California now has some of the most competitive districts in the nation, creating opportunities for new elected officials.[12][13][14]"_

<comment><USER9> Independent redistricting commissions don't work.

[http://scorevoting.net/GerryComm.html](http://scorevoting.net/GerryComm.html)

<comment><USER10> Apparently they don't work _in the US_.

That link says that they work in Canada, and they work in Australia too.

Without an underlying reason identified, this conclusion is somewhat unsatisfying.

<comment><USER11> The link also gives unsatisfying reasons for _why_ it says they don't work, e.g. incumbents keep winning elections.

I haven't studied the matter really closely, but from what little I do know of the issue, it makes me wonder--are Arizona, Washington, and NJ examples of the hyper-gerrymandered states that citizen redistricting is supposed to prevent?

Could it be that, in those states, they're already starting out from a pretty equitable district layout, such that when the citizenry gets to redraw the layout, it doesn't actually matter much?

Or, put another way, how would a citizen redistricting panel work in Florida or North Carolina or Texas?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Gerrymandering gets attention because it is malicious misrepresentation, but unintentional misrepresentation is just as bad. Voting is a flawed system that will always give some voters more voice than others.

\- The people who voted for the loser will not be represented (one of the reasons minorities are underrepresented).

\- The need of local representation is illusory. Make a list of all the political issues you care about. How many of them are local?

\- The effect of a bi-cameral legislature means that in the Senate, voters in Wyoming have over 60x the voting power of voters in California.

\- Voting itself is irrational under a cost/benefit analysis. So by definition, the least rational citizens are picking candidates.

\- Name recognition is huge for elections, meaning money will always effect elections.

\- Candidates suffer self-selection bias (as well as others). To run, you need to be good at public speaking (fear of public speaking is one of the most common fear in America), look a certain way (no tattoos or piercings allowed), and have a lust for power.

Representation is a math problem. The only solution is random sampling. Replace Congress with 1 house made up of 1,000 randomly sampled citizens and we will have true representation.

<comment><USER13> You'd get a good sample, but a poor representative. If a group of people is attempting to choose a person to advocate their interests, they'll choose the person best at advocacy, who is likely atypical in a variety of ways.

Because typically people are bad at public speaking, rhetoric, bargaining, and other means of advocating their interests.

<comment><USER12> Not everyone has to address Congress. As long as each valid viewpoint has at least one advocate, I trust people could figure out the best option. Less bargaining means fewer riders and pork, which is a good thing. I'm fine if only the best ~10% of Congress wrote/debated laws and the rest simply voted.

Also, remember we are comparing against the current Congress, which only represents the wealthiest among us. Pretty low bar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is an elegant solution with a lot of good properties: Equal population balancing, politically unbiased, reasonably understandable by the layman, typically geographically compact districts. But where's the discussion of the desirable and undesirable properties in a districting algorithm and how this algorithm achieves or doesn't achieve these properties?

specialist already mentioned maximal competetiveness, ROFISH mentioned clustering due to natural features. Is regional or ethnic representation important, or is it an undesirable bias? How about travel distance (either for voters or campaigners)? I'm sure you guys can think of others you'd like to see or to avoid. Feel free to suggest some, I'm curious.

There is a little more information at [http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html](http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html) but did I miss the real weighing of the tradeoffs and advocacy for this particular method above all others?

Edit: Found a discussion of the theoretical issues at [http://rangevoting.org/TheorDistrict.html](http://rangevoting.org/TheorDistrict.html) which touches on some, but not all of the points raised.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is no more a cure for gerrymandering than Condorcet voting is a cure for the various ills of the two-party system. Until you have a plan to implement this algorithm in the current political system, you're just solving sudokus and crosswords.

</comment><comment><USER16> The problem with gerrymandering isn't that people aren't capable of drawing simple lines to split states into districts.

<comment><USER17> Oh, but this algorithms removes all the choice. So there's nothing up anyone's sleeves.

<comment><USER18> It just moves the problem.

Instead of arguing about the borders, you have arguments about which clustering algorithm to use, and what the weights to the inputs should be.

A simplistic algorithm like shortest splitline will give impractical results in many cases. For sure you're going to put Eagleton and Pawnee in the same district.

Unless you have a mathematical definition of districts that lead to good government, a purely mathematical solution won't be possible.

<comment><USER17> > Instead of arguing about the borders, you have arguments about which > clustering algorithm to use, and what the weights to the inputs should be.

Yes, that's true. But with any luck the weights will have less knobs to turn, ie less information, than drawing lines.

> Unless you have a mathematical definition of districts that lead to good > government, a purely mathematical solution won't be possible.

We just need to avoid the worst government.

Or perhaps the Americans can just look around the world to see how other countries are drawing their voting districts, and compare what works and what doesn't. (Shouldn't federalisms make that kind of experimenting work inside the US alone, too?)

In any case, there's a more interesting simple technocratic fix to try: count ballot papers that tick more than one candidate as a vote for each of the ticked candidates.

This way you can vote for the lesser evil and who you actually want.

(See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here's a better algorithmic non-gerrymandered districting, solving for compactness: [http://bdistricting.com/2010/](http://bdistricting.com/2010/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Gerrymandering is an intentional act carried out by politicians, not one of happenstance. It's not something that can be cured with algorithms.

<comment><USER21> I take it the proposal is that there should be a law requiring that such-and- such an algorithm be used. That would take away the politicians' power to gerrymander.

(Of course it would also need to be voted for by the same politicians who presumably won by gerrymandering. Good luck with that.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The Redistricting Game[1] is an interesting approach to teaching about how gerrymandering works.

[1]: [http://redistrictinggame.org/game/launchgame.php](http://redistrictinggame.org/game/launchgame.php)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm concerned with the stability of the district borders. Because of the way this algorithm seems to like to slice through cities, it seems like minor changes in neighborhood density of a city is likely to significantly change the angle of the bisecting line, thus shifting large areas of the outlying region from one district to another.

This is bad for two reasons.

First, it seems a big weakness of democracy is voter ignorance. Throwing people repeatedly from one district to another, so they don't have time to learn the issues relevant to their district and the record of their representatives, will exacerbate the problem.

Second, the system can be gamed. It looks to me like approving or denying the construction of a large apartment complex near the center of a city can be used as a tool to push lines one direction or another. So approving that big apartment building in the city will increase population in that region, tending to tighten the angle made around it, thus freeing some voters from that district and pushing them into a neighboring one. Indeed, since the algorithm is recursive, this could have big follow-on effects subsequent iterations.

</comment><comment><USER24> One problem with this: it makes sense that district lines could be along natural (rivers, lakes, mountains) or political (towns, county) lines. Trusting a simple line algorithm may bisect a town down the middle.

<comment><USER25> Yep. Consider Eastern California: the Sierra Nevada runs north to south creating a natural barrier. There's a small sequence of cities east of the barrier. During the Spring and Fall campaign season, it can be literally impossible to cross that barrier: you must go a long way around or fly.

The suggested algorithm would unite cities on both sides of the divide. It would be very difficult for an underfunded candidate to campaign on both sides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A while back, I was friends with someone who was a forensic accountant and former state senator. She talked about gerrymandering quite a bit. She'd say "you don't choose your representatives, they choose you."

She said both parties cooperated in drawing safe seats for everybody, and claimed that most of the people in our state congress were corrupt. Anyone who didn't play along with the graft would find their district redrawn out from under them, if the timing made that possible.

This actually happened to another friend who was a former state house member. The two of them were instrumental in revealing the corrupt activities of state House Speaker Jim Black, who ended up serving time in prison.

<comment><USER27> I imagine Jim Black was a sacrifice as well - he didn't play along with somebody, so he got tossed to the wolves. And the public thinks "Well, that's been dealt with" and the rest of the corrupt remain safe from further scrutiny. For a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think this is fascinating even if it will never happen. It's important to keep in mind the nominal and actual result of human drawn district boundaries ("gerrymandering" is a pejorative).

In theory, human drawn district boundaries can create districts which are more homogenous so that, for example, a state with a few representatives and a few defined geographic or political divisions can divide things up in a way that makes sense. For example, it would seem odd for Las Vegas to be split into multiple districts in vast barren Nevada (it isn't -- LV is the smallest district).

What happens in practice is: "Contrary to one popular misconception about the practice, the point of gerrymandering isn't to draw yourself a collection of overwhelmingly safe seats. Rather, it's to give your opponents a small number of safe seats, while drawing yourself a larger number of seats that are not quite as safe, but that you can expect to win comfortably." [http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/15/am...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/15/americas- most-gerrymandered-congressional-districts/)

<comment> vezzy-fnord _Contrary to one popular misconception about the practice, the point of gerrymandering isn 't to draw yourself a collection of overwhelmingly safe seats. Rather, it's to give your opponents a small number of safe seats, while drawing yourself a larger number of seats that are not quite as safe, but that you can expect to win comfortably._

That almost sounds like a tautology.

<comment><USER29> What's tautological about it?

Here's the same sentiment expressed in image form: [http://i.imgur.com/bRPcQ7O.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/bRPcQ7O.jpg)

<comment> vezzy-fnord In the original statement, the latter is just a slightly more detailed strategy for achieving the former.

<comment><USER30> I think the ideal strategy in gerrymandering is not immediately obvious (although it may technically be a tautology, it is not obviously tautological). If you asked people which of the two following strategies is ideal, many would give the wrong answer:

1\. Begin by drawing the districts such that your opponents win almost 100% of the votes in as many districts as possible.

2\. Begin by drawing the districts such that you win almost 100% of the votes in as many districts as possible.

Upon analysis the mathematics of the situation is obvious, but one's gut reaction may be that winning elections handily for yourself seems obviously good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Splitline doesnt honor community or geographic boundaries. I'd suggest a modification that honors zipcode boundaries. The USPS has figured out basic units already.

<comment><USER32> Fun fact: there is actually no such thing as ZIP code boundaries.

ZIP codes are actually based on delivery routes: your ZIP code is the post office your mail carrier leaves from. ZIP codes will not actually respect community boundaries: if a town lies between two post offices, it is frequently more efficient for mail to be delivered by carriers from multiple post offices.

Moreover, not every address in the US receives home delivery. If the post office does not have a delivery route going past your home address, you can instead get a post office box from whichever post office you find most convenient. What happens to packages addressed to those street addresses is ... complex.

The "ZIP code maps" you have probably seen are actually creations of third- parties. If you ask very nicely, the Post Office will give you a list of which street addresses belong to which ZIP codes. A couple of different third party map-makers will then try to create a map based on these lists. They are not always useful or accurate.

<comment><USER27> Ok I wondered about this. Our local village has no mail delivery; everybody in town has to have a PO box. I thought Federal mail delivery was a given thing, like a right. How can the town just decide to blow it off?

<comment><USER32> Home delivery was never quite universal. Rural Free Delivery ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Free_Delivery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Free_Delivery)) wasn't even a thing until the 1890s. Hilariously, with budget cuts, there has been more of a tendency to keep RFD while cutting home delivery in some of the smaller towns and villages, since it is easier for people in the village to get to the post office.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It is pretty... but vastly oversimplifies the problem. If we are ever going to get something for real it needs to take into account real problems. Talking about things like actual operation of elections, not producing high numbers of different ballots because of splitting of districts.

For something to really work it is going to need to take into account things like existing political, and probably some physical, boundaries.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'd love to get rid of gerrymandering. I live in a massively gerrymandered district where the representative can very safely ignore the area where I live.

This algorithm appears to have some interesting results though. Check out Maryland: [http://rangevoting.org/Splitline2009/md.png](http://rangevoting.org/Splitline2009/md.png)

<comment><USER35> (O/T) And I live in the town where Gerry was from (his name is pronounced with a hard-G by the way, like Gail, not Jerry).

We have a drinking club named after him!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbridge_Gerry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbridge_Gerry)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> That seems to be a very oversimple approach. Cities are the most obvious problem. You kind of want a population center to have a single congressmen representing it. Mathematically, you want districts to be fairly compact. There have a been several Operations Research papers that try to do things in a more practical way.

Also, a greedy approach (split in half, repeat) seems weird to me.

</comment><comment><USER37> Technology can be used to help with this problem. Take a look at the maps from CommonCensus:

[http://commoncensus.org/maps.php#local_maps](http://commoncensus.org/maps.php#local_maps)

First people "vote" for the boundaries of their neighborhood and then congressional districts are created using these neighborhoods as atomic.

</comment><comment><USER38> The author of this site seems to think that in the ideal world, districts would be decided up with clear straight lines.

This is not the case. Districts should represent distinct groups of people. Ideally, with well drawn districts, political representation will be accurate to the popular vote.

I'd recommend you all read the following article if you haven't yet.

I think if you wanted to solve districts algorithmically, you would need a neural network.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/01/th...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/01/this- is-the-best-explanation-of-gerrymandering-you-will-ever-see/)

</comment><comment><USER39> Similar to this other algo:

[http://bdistricting.com/2010/](http://bdistricting.com/2010/)

</comment><comment><USER40> Although I don't necessarily disagree with this concept, I am not sure it is well refined. I noticed, looking at a certain city, that even with this shortest splitline the city was still rather split by more or less ethnically demographic lines.

</comment><comment><USER41> Another more obvious solution is to get rid of congressional districts and then apportion the seats down the list of highest vote getters to lowest vote getters until there are no more seats (across the entire state).

</comment><comment><USER42> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUS9uvYyn3A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUS9uvYyn3A)

this explains it quite well.

</comment><comment><USER43> Gerrymandering has more to do with Simpson's paradox. Look it up :)

<comment><USER44> Dude... thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This describes it quite well.

</comment><comment><USER45> Doesn't gerrymandering mostly carve out a lot of districts for black congressmen who otherwise wouldn't have districts? I think that's kinda what it boils down to in America. There are conservative areas adjacent to and mixed with majority black areas and they want different representation.

<comment><USER46> I'm not sure how common it is, but the linked site actually has an interesting discussion of this phenomenon, which Wikipedia calls "affirmative racial gerrymandering"[0], and how it would interact with the proposed scheme: [http://scorevoting.net/TheorDistrict.html#Minority](http://scorevoting.net/TheorDistrict.html#Minority)

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_States#Affirmative)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> gerrymandering is good--for the electorate. why?

Because gerrymandering increases homogeneity. A gerrymandered district is more homogeneous--the voters are more alike than they were before. In general.

Homogeneity in general increases unity. A more homogeneous district means the voters in general share more common interests. If the voters share more common interests then it is easier for them to elect and hold accountable a politician who can represent their common interests.

Of course if you want the corporations to have more control over the government, and you want the people to have less control, then gerrymandering is indeed bad.

<comment><USER48> Texas's 23rd stretched from Austin to the Mexico border. You think this has "more common interests"?

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/TravisCo...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/TravisCountyDistricts.png)

Regardless of desirability, gerrymandering does not by definition increase homogeneity. It's a tool that is used for political gain, whatever that may be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> gerry mandering is a symptom of democracy not the problem.

democracy is the problem, or rather it is a form of self governance which presents many dillemas.

historically , we know the bigger and more mature a democracy gets , the more it ages into socially defunct patterns of corruption , lowest common denominator, the decay of ethics, and embedded social passivity.

the solution to 'gerrymandering' is the end of our current democratic system, not some 2 bit claim that an algorithm is a solution to a symptom of a bigger problem .

<comment><USER50> And replace it with what?

<comment><USER51> Duh. Something better.*

*"better" is left as an exercise for the reader. I have a better solution but the margins of this textbox don't provide enough room for it.</comment></comment></comment>


Made in America, Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/made-in-america-again/379343/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Exporting manufacturing jobs is only cost-effective if the labor is about 4x cheaper. The coastal provinces of China are now at that level relative to the US. Manufacturing is mostly capital cost; labor cost isn't that big a fraction of product cost. Offshoring adds costs; air freight is expensive, sea freight takes forever, and long-distance less-than-container-load land shipping within China works surprisingly badly. Coordination is worse, and quality control is hard.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _New middle-class jobs might not be an oxymoron after all ... I have seen > $17–$20 starting hourly wages at new factories in Mississippi and South > Carolina._

That's $40K per year at best. Hardly a middle-class salary in contemporary United States. In fact, it's barely above minimum wages in many other countries.

<comment><USER4> _That 's $40K per year at best. Hardly a middle-class salary in contemporary United States_

\- There's a huge range to "middle-class". Consider whether your idea of "middle-class salaries" is in fact upper-middle-class. Remember that most of the middle class cannot afford to drive Priuses and BMWs.

\- In a lot of the United States, cost of living is a hell of a lot lower than the Bay. When your rent is $350/month for a two-bedroom flat and your car cost $5k, $40k might not be so bad after all.

\- The figure quoted is starting wage. It goes up from there, and twenty-year- olds don't yet need quite as much to live comfortably as they will later.

<comment><USER5> Where is rent $350/month?

I live in the heart of the "cheap, low cost" Midwest and there is nothing within 200 miles of me that rents below $650/month -- and even at $650, your talking about old, poorly maintained, single bedroom or studio flats.

Yes, there are lots of cheap 50k-100k houses. But what everyone forgets is the upkeep on those houses is enormous. You might have a $800/month mortgage payment on a 3 bedroom house, but also have to pay another $500-$1,000/month upkeep on that house.

My "cheap" Midwest home in Michigan (2br, 1350sqft) costs $1700/month in mortgage+upkeep. An luxury apartment in a downtown Seattle (2br, 850sqft) can be had for $1800/month. 40% higher wages on the coast, and only an extra $100/month in housing costs. (Zillow: [http://bit.ly/1sx9LH2](http://bit.ly/1sx9LH2))

You won't save a lot of money on rent/living expense in the Midwest, you'll just get a lot more empty house space "for free". That's great if you need lots of empty space (for kids and such). But otherwise, the cost of living difference is not _nearly_ as large as people pretend it is.

Yes, the literal dirt a building sits on is cheaper away from the coasts (land value). But that's literally the only difference in cost -- nearly everything else is more-or-less the same price (including home and building expenses, professional services, food, clothing, electronics, etc).

Some are even more expensive in the Midwest (home repairs and maintenance, nearly all utilities, etc)

<comment><USER4> I suppose I don't know exactly, but I live in the mountain region. It's about $1,000 for a 800sqft 1br apartment. Many people complain how housing is at least twice as expensive here as where they are from.

(I was elated, because housing here is _half_ as expensive as where I was from!)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory - <AUTHOR> http://www.teslamotors.com/about/press/releases/panasonic-and-tesla-sign-agreement-gigafactory

<comment><USER2> This just shows me that Tesla is able to execute. The Gigafactory, opening up patents, rapidly growing charger network, and the eventual $35k Gen III tells me they have tons of potential in the future.

Tesla is thinking big. They want everyone in the world to eventually have a electric car. I think they will own a significant share of premium market after they release the Gen III.

However, they will be cars that people will desire at a cheaper price point than the Gen III, from different manufacturers. Also some people love certain car brands regardless of anything else, and mostly will stick to those brands. It will be great that those other car brands will be able to more easily make electric vehicles.

Those electric cars from other manufacturers will most likely have a Tesla battery and charge on Tesla charging station. I think this is true disruption.

<comment><USER3> Okay, but when does the factory first come online? The projections are for by 2020, so where do any possible cost savings for the III come from? Unless we can expect it to slip a few more years like the X did.

I am hoping for a 200 mile range mid size, but I doubt Tesla will be first. I am also expecting range extender vehicles to have much more popularity initially because to be honest, I don't have time for 30 minute charge cycles when I am on trip and most people I know just want to get to their destination.

<comment><USER4> I think pushing the mainstream launches back would be a wise decision. They've just begun their hard knock education in designing for longevity and reliability with the earliest examples of the Model S passing the 2 year mark.

Traditional auto manufacturers have decades of experience driving the continual refinement of their designs. These efforts have resulted a general expectation among consumers of unfailing reliability and service life measured in decades. The issues they're experiencing with drive units are troubling but acceptable for most owners who know they bought a bleeding-edge testbed for future technology. My concern is one of time, things move relatively slow in the world of automotive engineering and these issues show Tesla has a lot to learn and a lot to change once they've discovered the points of failure. That kind of time doesn't fit with their expected release schedule and owners won't accept the kinds of failure rates experienced in the Model S in a mass market car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why are most of the lithium cells cylindrical, while most of our devices are cuboid? (I think of phones, laptops, external battries... but phones and most laptops have flat lithium cells nowadays). Is cylindrical less expensive? Is it more secure? It seems like a waste of space to me.

<comment><USER6> It's an efficiency matter. The cylinder gives good electrode surface relative to the amount of matter contained. For a cube that ratio would be much worse, for a sphere it would be optimal, but spheres are harder to manufacture and connect to, as well as harder to stack in arrays. So we take a medium between the sphere and the cube and end up with a sweet spot in the cylindrical shape.

<comment><USER7> This doesn't explain why LiPoly batteries are cuboids.

<comment><USER6> Indeed it does not, this is about Tesla's and Panasonics 'gigafactory' which will make Lithium-Ion batteries in a cylindrical form factor.

Lithium Polymer batteries (or LiPo for short) are a special case of Lithium- Ion batteries. They are sold in a 'pouch' format (and they are not the first to use a format like that, for instance, in the polaroid cartridges there used to be a battery in a similar form factor (polapulse)).

The reason why LiPo batteries are not so constrained in shape as their siblings is that the electrolyte is a _liquid_. Solid electrolyte batteries are typically much more constrained in terms of shapes.

This is also why regular car batteries (lead-acid) can be block shaped, the acid is also a liquid.

The polapulse was an interesting battery, it only had to fire the camera 10 times but was quite high current. The packaging constraints of the cartridge dictated the battery geometry and so a flat pouch like battery was born.

LiPo batteries exist in all kinds of interesting shapes and sizes too.

<comment><USER8> Also, and this is entirely speculation and I'd love to hear a battery engineer confirm this, but: if you're packaging together cylindrical batteries, it inherently gives you more air channels between the batteries to promote cooling. When you're talking tens of kilowatts, both in discharge and charge rates, the percentage that ends up as waste heat suddenly becomes a whole lot of heat. You probably wouldn't want a maximally stuffed cavity with these packs turning into a single, massive chunk of thermal mass.

EDIT: looks like I was firsted somewhere below, doh!

<comment><USER6> But you're 100% on point there. That's a side benefit from having those cylindrical cells.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is very significant for Panasonic's new direction. They now partner with a startup that takes on a IPR policy radically different from the Panasonic of the past. Panasonic's R&D engineers used to be measured internally by the amount of patents filed and the company had a large presence in every significant patent pool. In addition it means that one of Panasonic's key manufacturing expertise will be located overseas, which is also a radical departure to the mindset of keeping core manufacturing as 'black boxes' in Japan. However this may still apply to components that are integrated in the Gigafactory.

<comment><USER6> > which is also a radical departure to the mindset of keeping core > manufacturing as 'black boxes' in Japan.

I saw some of this up close recently and it was quite interesting how Japan was still 'fighting the last war' in this sense.

They were trying to avoid a repetition of Japanese companies doing an end-run around American and European companies by doing their manufacturing and then turning around to innovate on the processes and principles in the end resulting in a wholly new industrial base.

But the world has long moved on from that time and even though there is plenty of innovation in this sphere the threat of a manufacturer turning into a competitor is still present (for instance, in China) but between the US, the EU and Japan that threat is all but non-existent.

Japanese companies are slowly coming around on this and are becoming more free with respect to sharing technology and IP with other partners. This Panasonic move is another step in that direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Has there been any analysis on the amount of joule energy pumped out of all of the current gas stations on a daily basis?

I'm worried the current electric grid is woefully insufficient for a world full of electric cars. I know their are plenty of electric lines out there running at greater than 100% of their rated capacity already.

<comment><USER11> Napkin math supports your concerns.

\- The US used 134.51 billion gallons of gas in 2013.[1] \- There are ~33 kWh/gal in gasoline [2]

134.51e9 gal x 33 kWh / gal = 4.44e12 kWh (4.44 trillion kWh / year)

\- The US used a total of 3.856 trillion kWh of electricity in 2011 [3]

Ignoring improved efficiency and excluding other factors, converting all gasoline usage to electric would more than double US electricity consumption.

Under reasonable assumptions, PV solar generates about 0.75 kWh/m^2 per day. [4]

4.44 trillion kWh/year / 0.75 kWh/m^2 per day x 365 days/year / 1e6 m^2 per km^2 = 16,219 km^2

Which means you could generate all of the required electricity with about 16,200 km^2 of solar panels - which is just about exactly the total land area of Hawaii [5], or 405 million average home PV systems.

It's doable, but it will be non-trivial.

[1] [http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=23&t=10](http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=23&t=10) [2] [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent) [3] [http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricit...](http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_use) [4] [http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/09/dont-be-a-pv- eff...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/09/dont-be-a-pv-efficiency- snob/) [5] [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terri...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_area)

<comment><USER12> One fact everyone seems to forget is that it takes approximately 6.5 Kwh of energy to refine one gal of gas. That is JUST refinement and not the energy to pump, store, etc.

My Volt drives around 22 -> 28 miles on that power.

<comment><USER13> I was going to raise the same point. And, considering that the average new car sold in the US gets 25MPG, we should be just about breaking even.

<comment><USER14> Breaking even eventually. I doubt they're going to suddenly just stop refining all of that oil. There will have to be a trend before the oil companies start lowering their output.

<comment><USER15> A given car will either use refined gas or electricity. The point is those both use a similar amount of electricity, either way the impact on the grid is similar. Oil companies are not going to refine more gas than is used. They might refine more than is used on a particular day or even month, but they are not going to outpace demand on any long time scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I found some of the business arrangements interesting, though maybe not surprising. I think those are the real new details of this release.

First, they'll be producing 50GwH of packs, but only 35GwH of cells; so they'll still be dependent on external cell manufacturing for a sizable portion of the packs.

Second, that it sounds like Panasonic will basically own and run the cell part of the factory; as opposed to Tesla or a joint venture purchasing the equipment and making the cells themselves.

<comment><USER17> Panasonic already has one of the largest production complexes in the world for battery production; but with the huge demand from Tesla they have had a hard time keeping up with the market. I see this as a way for them to scale up to a capacity that can handle Tesla's orders while still being able to produce 18650 cells for the rest of the electronics market. Over the past few months I (and many others) have had a very hard time getting a reliable supply of the NCR18650B cells Tesla is using in their packs.

I don't see Panasonic wanting to give up any of the control it has over this sector. The agreement is probably positioned to obligate Tesla to purchase X amount of cells a year to make the new gigafactory economically feasible for Panasonic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Again as with my previous response, I still dont get why the need for a Gigafactory. Battery Industry are an extremely automated, high volume market and with profit margin in single digit. Cutting those off aren't going to automatically made electric cars affordable.

Unless Telsa and Panasonic has jointly developed an revolutionary battery that is going to need some funding and mass produced. But any new battery will need years in time for safety testing. And the news would properly have leaked by now.

<comment><USER6> Making things in volume reduces the price. The profits on the batteries may be low (I'm not an insider so I have no idea what the profits are on these), but the profits on the cars (which Tesla makes) are reasonably high. It's like investing in infrastructure when you make something that uses that infrastructure, akin to a hosting facility investing the fibre optic lines that connect it.

Electric cars are already affordable, that's not the main sticking point (a fast way to charge them and a widely rolled out network of charging stations is).

If they manage to shave a few percentage points off the cost of production and create jobs in the process I don't see the problem.

<comment><USER19> Tesla says:

[http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/gigafactory](http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/gigafactory)

"In cooperation with strategic battery manufacturing partners, we're planning to build a large scale factory that will allow us to achieve economies of scale and minimize costs through innovative manufacturing, reduction of logistics waste, optimization of co-located processes and reduced overhead."

I guess that and also securing the supply chain for themselves as the rest of the car industry starts/continues to compete with them for the battery supply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So are they working on a new battery design?

The last time I did some research on the Tesla batteries it was just a ton of high-quality 18650s, is this still true?

<comment><USER21> Tesla still uses 18650 cells exclusively, unless I'm misinformed. They are still chemistry and form factor agnostic and only care about performance and price. This announcement is part of a plan to further reduce battery cell and battery pack cost, as well as increase production volumes by a factor of 10-50 over the next 10 years. I don't think there is any information on how these new batteries will look yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am curious about the choice of lithium-ion vs. something like lithium-iron- phosphate (LFP) battery chemistry.

Obviously, there is a good reason for Tesla and Panasonic not to have chosen LFP, does anyone know why? I know the energy density is lower, but are there other reasons?

<comment><USER23> I would suspect safety is probably the driving force here, especially considering the capacity of these batteries.

[https://suite.io/mike-dehaan/4bfn2v4](https://suite.io/mike-dehaan/4bfn2v4) [http://www.umanitoba.ca/outreach/conferences/phev2007/PHEV20...](http://www.umanitoba.ca/outreach/conferences/phev2007/PHEV2007/proceedings/PluginHwy_PHEV2007_Session1_Guerfi.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> In terms of investing (buying Tesla stock), is Tesla's probable-seeming big success with their next two cars already built in to the price? In other words, how overvalued is Tesla stock? Would it be worth making it a significant fraction of my portfolio?

<comment><USER25> > In terms of investing (buying Tesla stock), is Tesla's probable-seeming big > success with their next two cars already built in to the price?

Definitely.

> In other words, how overvalued is Tesla stock?

For those following Discounted-Cash-Flow models, a lot.[1]

> Would it be worth making it a significant fraction of my portfolio?

That's up to you. I'll leave you two parting thoughts:

a) It could follow the path of Amazon, lots of people screaming "overpriced" forever as it rises.

b) Building a lasting car manufacturer isn't exactly easy.[2]

\---

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/aswath-damodaran-tesla- valuat...](http://www.businessinsider.com/aswath-damodaran-tesla- valuation-2014-3)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_man...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_manufacturers_of_the_United_States)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Out of curiosity, with the recent release of their patents, is Tesla going to be enabling other car manufacturers to purchase these batteries? Standardising on a housing module across manufacturers seems a 'good thing' for the general consumer.

<comment><USER20> I don't see why they wouldn't, they already sell their powertrains to other companies.

It would probably depend on how much extra capacity they have. The Tesla vehicles are in high demand and only going to be in more demand when they start rolling out the Tesla 3 (which is really the 4th Tesla isn't it, I guess they're referring to it being the 3rd generation with the Model S and X being the same generation).

<comment><USER27> Elon gave a funny explanation for the new name: he would have wanted a Model E to compose S E X, but the name was already taken. So he chose 3 to at least have S 3 X.

<comment><USER28> I don't know why this is being downvoted. Elon Musk himself confirmed that S, E, and X was supposed to make fun of how sex is used in marketing to sell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I want to own an electric car so badly in my lifetime.

Really hope this makes that happen.

They sure are quiet though, I worry about pets and wildlife.

 _Gigafactory will employ about 6,500 people by 2020_

Delivery truck drivers? I mean the factory is should be mostly automated by 2020.

<comment> pi-rat Just move to the bay area or Norway, both of these places seem to issue Teslas to everyone ;)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Mac app to track time on social media - <AUTHOR> http://focuslist.co/escape2/ <comment><USER2> This works mostly on Safari and Chrome, and I think I might be in the minority but I'm using FF for 90% of the time. Somehow I am aware I need this but it's also unfortunate that it's only available for OSX as most of my social media time is spent on a tablet/phone.</comment>


Redline Smalltalk on the JVM - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/redline-smalltalk-v1-0

<comment><USER2> I thought Smalltalk was dead and its good ideas transplanted in other languages. My question to anyone talking to me about a "resurrected" version is: _what does it still have that other Smalltalk-inspired languages don't? what does it have over (J)Ruby for example? what can I do in it better than in Scala?_

<comment><USER3> Smalltalk is two things: language and environment. Many langs have borrowed from Smalltalk the language. None provide the environment. The leverage this environment provides is something that has to be experienced to appreciate. The environment provides exploration, reasoning about the code as a whole and refactoring at a level that no text editor or traditional IDE can match.

IBM VisualAge for Java was actually mostly VisualAge Smalltalk under the covers and provided a Java dev experience that for me has never been matched. When IBM dropped it for Eclipse, my productivity took a nosedive.

I don't care much about Smalltalk running on the JVM without the environment. I wish Redline success and hopefully they will create an environ as well.

<http://www.pharo-project.org> is a fantastic cleaned up derivative of squeak. Pharo 2.0 will come out of beta within a month. The 2.0 beta is good and Pharo v1.4 is also solid. The Cog VM <http://www.mirandabanda.org/cog/>, which is the newer VM that works with Squeak and Pharo is impressive. It doesn't have the tuning options and scale of JVM at the moment. I see no reason the Cog VM can't fairly quickly evolve to scaling on par with JVM for many use cases.

If the sugary syntax of ruby is a key motivator to use it over Smalltalk, that's cool. For me, I find the simplicity of the Smalltalk syntax combined with environment worth far more than the complexity of what Ruby has to do to provide all that sugar with little ability to reason about the code as a whole.

Scala provides language features that Smalltalk nor Ruby provide and those attributes may be more important for some.

<comment><USER4> The "Smalltalk Environment" is almost completely written in Smalltalk, you know. So long as you can replicate the behavior of the Change Log. Saving and restoring images, and morphing instances when you change classes, it should be portable. Also, there's the broken class side inheritance on the JVM to deal with.

<comment><USER5> There is no way they would reuse JVM classes in a faithful Smalltalk port; it would probably be more like JRuby where the object system is implemented a layer above the JVM and some interop is provided to the Java class system.

<comment><USER6> It's worth looking at Mark Roos's talks about RTalk which is a port of Smalltalk to the JVM to support some existing commercial software. It compiles JVM byte code from existing Smalltalk bytecode, and keeps the images if I remember correctly.

In the language I work on we do use JVM classes, but our own methods tables are used to model the inheritance hierarchy, and methods are all static JVM methods under the hood so we can support all the meta programming that you'd expect in a Smalltalk inspired language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish the project luck. I have had a lot of good mileage on the JVM platform using Clojure and JRuby, and a very good Smalltalk implementation on the JVM might also be useful.

That said, ignoring the commercial Smalltalk implementations, I think that Pharo is the future of Smalltalk. The Cog virtual machine is reasonably efficient and the UI is in my opinion much improved over Squeak.

I am not sure how widely used the Seaside web application platform is used since the original authors went to work on other things at Twitter. At one point I thought that Seaside would give Smalltalk a lift in the same way that Rails did for Ruby.

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks like an excellent plan. The JVM is awesome and having smalltalk code in plain text files instead of opaque image files might make it worth to take another look at smalltalk.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how class modification is implemented. It claims even "final" variables can be modified.

<comment><USER10> Fields marked "final" can be modified through reflection.</comment></comment>


ASMR – That pleasurable feeling you can't explain - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_response

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because I regularly experience ASMR, since I was a child. For years I would look for a reasonable explanation that I could give to others. Such a strange phenomenon and possibly the hardest to explain to others.

<comment><USER2> I'm quite interested in this too, although I only heard it given a name recently.</comment></comment>


Thread: Computer science is a field which hasn't yet encountered consequences - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/yonatanzunger/status/975545527973462016 <comment><USER2> Not sure I agree. One of the founding fathers of computer science ( von Neumann ) calculated the most optimal detonation point for hiroshima to generate the greatest destruction and the widest spread of radiation. Computer science was involved in calculating nuclear ICBM trajectory. Computer science created ARPANET which was a network designed to be as resilient to nuclear attacks.

> In physics, I can tell you that everyone, from their first days as an > undergrad (or often before), encounters this and wrestles with it.

Simply a lie. Was initially a physics major before settling on CS/etc. Nobody thought about or cared about the nukes. Actually, the nukes were more or a draw rather than a deterrent. In my university, we had to take a philosophy of ethics ( one of my favorite classes ) and we discussed everything there, but no physics major I knew lost sleep over hiroshima.

Also, despite the revisionist history about scientists being appalled by hiroshima, the truth is everyone celebrated and partied after hiroshima.

> For a long time, it frightened me that biology hadn't yet had this moment of > reckoning

What? I guess he never heard of darwin? Social darwinism was quite a big deal and the scientific foundation of white supremacy for nearly 100 years. It's something that justified the continued extermination of the natives in the US, aborigines in australia and eventually the "untermensch" in nazi germany. That legacy is what biologists like stephen gould worked to undo for decades.

Study of ethics should be encouraged as it is an interesting topic, but it's not a panacea. Studying it won't necessarily make you ethical.

</comment><comment><USER3> When I took nuclear physics there was no mention of any bombs. It was just introduction to standard model without QFT. I also took some chemistry courses and no one cared about dynamite or whatever unless if were directly working with dangerous chemicals in labs.

I'm not sure maybe I wasn't paying enough attention in class. But I'm pretty sure atom bomb making is more engineering than physics so maybe that's why we didn't care about it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh, yes it has. It's just hard to grok the impact if you aren't a practitioner, and aren't paying attention.

Computer science has enabled the complete erosion of privacy in the modern world. It has killed, intentionally, or by accident in many ways.

Computer Science has both enabled the most awe-inspiring capability for acting as a genetic propagator on the one hand, and made the ability to access information increasingly difficult for the uninitiated.

It is in the process of being employed as a means of wiping one's hands of liability for unethical behavior based on black box AI being fed biased models.

I shudder at the field nowadays. In fact, I've become downright revolted. For every virtuous project (I.e. bringing some semblance of sight to the blind), there are thousands of predatory value extraction systems in the process of being implemented every day.

To quote Marvin the Paranoid Robot:

"Consequences? Don't talk to me about consequences. Brain the size of a planet and they have me doing trillions upon trillions of transactions a second all to move their little numbers around. They complain endlessly about never being able to get anywhere or do anything, but they never seem to notice just what it is they're doing to sabotage themselves. They live their little, pathetic lives, trying to eke out an existence, and post pictures of it on me others end up getting angry or amused at having viewed, but never really acting on. They leave me to figure out what they want to see or hear, and then they take my numbers, and have me move other numbers around that everyone seems to get either very excited or very stressed about. They get angry at me when what they tell me to do isn't actually what they want, and get in an even bigger uproar when they realize amongst themselves that when they outsource their thinking to me the results are only ever as good as what they put in and that decision is made by one of them, not me, but guess who gets the blame?

Bah. To /dev/null with it all."

</comment><comment><USER5> Ethics are part of the curriculum in my software engineering classes, but the idea that it makes anyone less likely to do something someone else might consider unethical is dubious.

You can almosy always justify your actions with consequentialism just as the scientists who worked on the atomic bomb did.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm still waiting for getting the value out of Bitcoin that has been put into it in energy expenditure.</comment>


Texas drops Algebra II requirement  - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/trend-starting-texas-drops-algebra-ii-mandate-183947867.html

<comment><USER2> Sure. Why should future unemployed, office drones, McJob holders, repair men etc, which comprise the 90% of the school population, need Algebra II?

That's for richer people's kids who get to do something interesting with their work, and for the ocassional very persistent smart kid.</comment>


RIAA Claims File Sharers Are 'Undermining Humanitarian Efforts In Haiti' - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100305/0317058431.shtml <comment><USER2> I'm not sure that these albums do much good for the humanitarian effort to begin with; people who buy the albums will feel that they've already done something to help and hence donate less through other channels. All I can really see it adding is overhead; it's more of a tool to promote artists and the RIAA than actually increase the amount of aid.

<comment><USER3> And I guess that by saying this, you are also undermining their effort. Well, maybe even more, those who downloaded the album at least showed some interest in this way of, hm, "helping", and even might buy it later. It's just an compilation, it isn't really worth of downloading just for the music.

<comment><USER4> It could be said that for every $1 that is scattered across the playing field of charities, it could be more useful to locally administered programs within Haiti. Unfortunately it's lost on the fact that most of the "American" run charities have huge administrative costs that are amazing to me. (And yeah, and it bothers me that CEOs make $200-$500 per YEAR at a non-profit - far more than a person should need or want from a charitable organization.)

<comment><USER5> You meant $200k? Yeah, that seems excessive. Like how those "prosperity gospel" churches pay the pastors running it similar amounts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I await the days when musicians indirectly related to RIAA donate money to NSPCC or similar children's charity, and then say P2P is partially responsible for child abuse.

</comment><comment><USER7> But wont anybody please think of the children????

</comment><comment><USER8> Files sharers deprive labels of income > labels pay less tax to the USG > USG cannot afford armour for soldiers > troops die in Iraq of preventable equipment shortages

Voilà, file sharers are killing american soldiers overseas.

But wait, there's more. File sharers are killing american soldiers, but they're not a declared state army. Therefore they're non-soldier enemy combatants, who as we all know can be sent to Gitmo without trial! What are we waiting for?

<comment><USER9> You had me right upto 'labels pay tax'.

No movie in the last 50years has made a profit according to Hollywood accounting

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> rhetorical imbeciles advertise altruism

</comment><comment><USER11> In World War II, the first file-sharers nearly cost the Allies the war. Every time a Jimmy Dorsey record was "loaned" (pirated) out to a fellow soldiers, Hitler won another battle.</comment>


Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding how the Angel/VC business work - <AUTHOR> I am on the look for a good book covering how the VC industry works from convertible notes to double dipping to dilutions to Seed, Angel, ABCD rounds etc. <comment><USER2> The Founder's Dilemmas, Venture Deals, Startup CEO

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>